I’m thinking of joining the 21st century and subscribing to one of these services. Since my 160GB iPod Classic finally died a few years ago I’ve been listening to downloaded music a lot less, and alternating between streaming music on Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube a lot more. Currently making use of the three month Apple Music trial. I listen to a lot of music (8 hours+ per day while coding) on multiple machines, so the portability is a must, and since I use my 8GB smart phone as a replacement to the iPod, it isn’t an option to carry a large library with me any more.

Interested in opinions on the following services or others:

Spotify Premium

Apple Music

SoundCloud Go

Tidal, Google, and others… I see that Amazon launched their own rival late last year too.

The pros/cons as I see it:

Spotify Premium

Pros:

Huge library of officially licensed music

Data doesn’t count towards my mobile plan

Cons

It seems to do things behind my back. E.g. I signed in with username and password and it reactivated my Facebook account for no reason.

Apple Music

Can be combined with existing iTunes library for music that isn’t on streaming services, such as Panzer Dragoon Saga’s soundtrack

Cons:

iTunes on Windows isn’t the greatest

Requires a dedicated app (no web browser version)

SoundCloud Go

Pros:

Awesome web based UI

Comments on individual parts of tracks

Lots of fan remixes mixed with offical tracks all in one place

Cons:

Less variety of officially licensed music than Spotify/Apple Music (hopefully this will change, but right now there’s a lot of good music missing)

I would like to hear any views on these services and others. I realise that it’s not a zero-sum game, but I would prefer not to change services too often as it’s useful to keep playlists together in one place, etc.